"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe", which can be spelled a number of ways, is a children's counting rhyme, used to select a person in games such as tag. It is one of a large group of similar rhymes in which the child who is pointed to by the chanter on the last syllable is 'counted out'. The rhyme has existed in various forms since well before 1820,[1] and is common in many languages with similar-sounding nonsense syllables.

Since many similar counting rhymes existed earlier, it is difficult to ascertain this rhyme's exact origin.

There are many common variations, such as replacing tiger with "piggy", "tinker", "tigger", "chicken", "monkey", "baby", "spider", "teacher", "miner", a two-syllable name, etc.; and changing the verb in the third line to "screams", "wiggles", "squeals" or another verb.[3] The last two lines may be changed to "if he hollers, let him pay, fifty dollars every day."

Sometimes additional lines are added at the end of the rhyme to draw out or manipulate the selection process or make it seem less predetermined, such as:

My mother told me/says to pick the very best one, and that is Y-O-U[3]

This version was similar to that reported by Henry Carrington Bolton as the most common version among American schoolchildren in 1888.[11] It was used in the chorus of Bert Fitzgibbon's 1906 song "Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo":

It was also used by Rudyard Kipling in his "A Counting-Out Song", from Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides, published in 1935.[13] This may have helped popularise this version in the United Kingdom where it seems to have replaced all earlier versions until the late twentieth century.[3]

Iona and Peter Opie pointed out in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes that the word "nigger" was common in American folk-lore, but unknown in any English traditional rhyme or proverb.[3] This, combined with evidence of various other versions of the rhyme in the British Isles pre-dating this version, would seem to suggest that it originated in North America, although the apparently American word 'holler' was first recorded in written form in England in the fourteenth century, whereas according to the Oxford English Dictionary the words 'Niger' or 'nigger' were first recorded in England in the sixteenth century with their current disparaging meaning. The 'olla' and 'toe' are found as nonsense words in some nineteenth century versions of the rhyme, and it could possibly be that the original 'Where do all the Frenchmen Go?' (probably originating during one of the periods of Anglo-French warfare) was later on replaced by the earlier version in the United States, using some of the nonsense words.[citation needed]

The 1933 Looney Tunes cartoon Bosko's Picture Show parodies MGM as "TNT pictures", whose logo is a roaring and burping lion with the motto "Eenie Meanie Minie Moe" in the place of MGM's "Ars Gratia Artis".

In May 2014, an unbroadcast outtake of BBC motoring show Top Gear showed presenter Jeremy Clarkson reciting the rhyme and deliberately mumbling a line which some took to be "catch a nigger by his toe".[25] In response to accusations of racism, Clarkson apologised to viewers that his attempts to obscure the line "weren't quite good enough".[26]